


From the Eyes of Innocence

by TayBartlett9000



Category: Ender's Game - All Media Types
Genre: Ender wracked with guilt, Final Battle, Gen, Hurt, Reposted from Fanfiction, a terrible story to tell the truth, final bugger egg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 15:15:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8018932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TayBartlett9000/pseuds/TayBartlett9000
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of the  final battle, told from the perspectives of the bugger king and queen. An awful story to be truthful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From the Eyes of Innocence

From the eyes of innocence. .

By Tay Bartlett.

 

“Do they know that we come in peace?”

Tehr sat on the bridge of the bugger starship, eyes gazing out of the starboard viewing port, watching as the stars rushed past her.  The shimmering balls  of fire were home to her. They were her lifeline, her ticket to the freedom that she yearned for, being the only bugger queen with any sense of self.   Tehr belonged in the stars, seeing many worlds and analysing many verieties of alien life,  and now she was journeying further than she ever had  prier to this mission, journeying to the human’s home world. Yet they were not far from their own home. If she concentrated her energy, Tehr could still hear and feel the voices and minds of the other Buggers back home, meaning that they were not far.

  Tehr hadn’t seen the little blue green planet before, but doubted they would get that far. She had seen many pictures of it, from the left over footage from the  war eighty years before, the war that had resulted in a mass slaughter on the part of the ruthless  Mazer Rackham.

Those stories were legendary on the Bugger planet, and Tehr had been schooled on what they had learned of human behaviour, WHICH WAS CONSIDERABLY MORE THAN WHAT THE HUMANS HAD LEARNED OF THEM.   Tehr’s ancestors of eighty years ago, had journeyed to Earth to try and astabblish a colony among the natives, but had been  repulsed, refused entry onto the planet, and had been feared ever since.  Tehr still had no idea why the people of Earth feared them, but also had a nagging feeling that she and her crue mate would find out pretty soon.

Next to Tehr, . lounging  comfortably in a flight chair, Faran’s eyes were also locked exclusively on the approaching planet. The computer screens in front of them displayed ever growing images of the planet Earth, still many thousands of miles sunward.

Faran, a bugger of the male gender, had promised whole heartedly to accompany Tehr and her flight crues on their mission to broker an end to the fighting. Faran and Tehr, the leaders of the bugger colony, the king and queen if their vocabulary allowed it,  were naturally the ones to fly at the head of the sworm of starships, and they, naturally, would lead their people into Earth’s territory. Those whom she commanded would follow the Queen through the gates of hell if they had to, but they would follow without understanding, not knowing what they were in for. Tehr’s people, unlike herself, had a psychic hive mind, and thus, did what she did and thought the way she herself  thought, so whether they liked it or not, they would accompany her.

“Do you think they know that we come in peace?” Tehr asked again.  

“I do not know,” Faran replied, glancing at Tehr as he spoke. “I do certainly think that we are taking a grate risk in entering this sector. I had word from one of the sibordinates that they have been  training up some human super  soldiers, in an attempt to defy us, though I do not fully understand why they  think that they need to fight us.” ”

Tehr nodded, an all too human reaction that one  performs when one agrees with what the other has said. It was an  idiosyncrasy that she had adopted wile studying the humans threw the eyes of Ender Wiggin.  “I have seen these soldiers,” she told her male companion. Her eyes were wide with  bug-like   curiosity as she continued. “I have been communicating with their chief soldier, a  young  and vulnerable boy by the name of…” She paused here, as if trying to recall a  complex and long  dormant  memory. “Ender Wiggin,” Tehr supplied finally, “he has been traumatised somewhat by our probing questions. He is beginning to  question the morrel integrity of what the humans in charge have been teaching him. I fear that he is losing his mind.”  

“So will he show us understanding?” Faran asked, voice low with innocent concern. “Will he know that we mean him and his human friends no harm?”

“I cannot say,” Tehr  acknowledged as if the  mear admission of her  concern was causing her some discomfort.

They flew on. Behind their mother ship, many smaller  Bugger ships flew in close formation, each manned by one of Tehr’s fello species. Tehr had no need to look round. She knew that they would be there. No bugger, aside from the highest  in the  colony, had any real sense of self, so she knew that her wishes were her peoples’ collective command.

Tehr flew steadily,  edging closer and closer to the territory of Earth. She was a good pilot, and they flew very fast, closing the gap between them and the battle school with every passing nanno second.

 They were, unknowingly, flying right into the worst mass slaughter they had ever  entered into. The international fleet had decided to attack first, to show the Buggers who commanded space.

 But how  could  Tehr have known? She had no idea that the human invasion fleet, led by the eleven yearold Ender Wiggin, had already been dispatched and were drawing nearer to the unaware alien fleet. The  Buggers had no desire for  another war.

But of course, the  humans  didn’t know that. Or, more accurately, they were refusing  to believe that they may have  be mistaken. After all, humans do not usually like to admit that they are wrong, and would go to any lengths to prove themselves right. Humans, unbeknown to Tehr or Faran, also instinctively hated and feared what they couldn’t understand. And the thing that they had no hope of understanding, was the Buggers themselves.

Tehr was unaware when the first ships were attacked, attacked from behind, human  style. But she became aware of the absence of many minds and she knew with some  level of dark certainty, that they were once again under attack.

“They are gaining on us,” Faran told her, as if Tehr didn’t know. His eyes were wide with  frightened hurt, as if the pain of the dying was his own. Tehr wished that she knew what to say to him. Faran was new to the  concept of fighting. He knew little about the humans, and was panicking.

“We will have to  defend ourselves,” Tehr said quietly, sending the mental instruction to her people behind her, those who were still living anyway.  She  could feel their collective understanding of her orders, and spun their ship around to face their  apponents.

They were sleek crafts, of the highest quality and design. They were human in origin. So, the humans were after them. They did not know that the Buggers came in peace.  Tehr’s many  efforts to telepathicly communicate with Ender  Wiggin  had failed, and they had decided to blow them out of the sky before the Buggers got the chance.

 Tehr felt her heart sink. She didn’t want to do this. She did not want to kill, but she had no choice. Her people were in danger. And her job was to defend. To protect.  

Two more small Bugger star crafts were taken down within a few seconds. Tehr watched, as the starships blazed with white hot fire and  fell to pieces, killing the   occupants inside instantly. More voices and minds  disappeared from Tehr’s head as she watched them die, and she pressed at the firing stud, taking out a few of their ships in return.

 These humans had excelerated their technology somewhat since the last war, and they were   grately outnumbered. Who ever was commanding them, was commanding very well. Their tight formations, calculated for both attack and defense, were very well executed and Tehr could not hope to compete. She took a few more of the human space crafts out, but her ships were no match for those operated by the humans.

“We are losing,” Faran was saying, voice degected and sorrowful.

Tehr fired again, once again taking out their ships,  knowing that if they refused to defend  themselves, they would most certainly die.  

“Retreat!” she called, sending the mental command to her  remaining  crue members. She had no choice any more. Her people were losing and losing badly. Tehr sighed. There was no point, she told herself, in fighting a war that you couldn’t possibley win.

The starships that were left, turned around and followed the  mother ship across the skies.

But the humans were gaining. More and more of the Bugger ships went down in flames, and as they neared the  Bugger homeworld,  the tactics of the humans suddenly changed.

Tehr watched, with a kind of doomed fascination, as the ships belonging to the human fleet, formed into one solid mass, all taking aim at one central point.

 Only Faran’s stiffening at her side, and his despairing groan,   alerted Tehr to the very real danger they were in.  She became aware of where the humans were directing their fire power, and a dead weight settled in the region of her mind.  

The explosions of sound and light were enough to strip their own ship of its shields. Tehr blinked, trying to force her eyes to adjust to the sudden and  piercing light.

When she looked again, what had been their home world, was now a black hole. Her planet, her home, was now nothing but a memory. The space where it had been was enough to tell her that and she sank back in her flight chair, no longer  able to keep up the fight. The humans had gone one step further in their attempts to punish them, and had destroyed the only home she, faran and their crue had ever known.

Tehr could no longer feel or hear the voices of her fello Buggers inside her head. There  were no longer any voices to hear. In one fell swoop, every  Bugger but she and Faran, had been killed, killed without mercy. Killed before they had had a  chance to explain themselves. Tehr’s head was empty, and so was her soul. Ender Wiggin had done his job well.

“We need to try and find a safe place,” Faran said in a horse voice, low and trembulous with emotion. He took the controls from Tehr and turned their ship around, glad that the human fleet hadn’t seen them.

The  toil  through space, away from the black hole that had, until recently, been their home, was  exawsting and Tehr could only sit in futility and dwell upon their failure.

 She had a plan forming in her numb brain. As Faran took their ship far away, presently  landing it on  a  disregarded asteroid, Tehr finalised her plans.

 She had to find Ender. She had to try and summon him to her. She had to force him to listen to her. She had been studying Ender now for quite a while, psychicly delving into his mind,  and knew that he had an intellect far beyond that of his fello human recrutes. Ender was a clever child, a bit too bright when one thought about it. He was also compassionate, and was not a killer at heart. Ender Wiggin had been manipulated into this by the human teachers at his battle school, and deep within her soul, Tehr knew that he was finding this act of major planet death as appalling and horrible as she was. After all,  someone that intelligent, someone as compassionate as Ender was, would never have done that willingly. Tehr wondered whether Ender knew yet that he had just personally brought around a major planetary geneside. She suspected that he did not. After all, brutal killing was what his older brother Peter  took plessure in, and she had tried time and time again to tell him that he was nothing like Peter. In any case, Tehr knew how the battle had been faught. Those ships had been commanded by Ender from the battle   school, and Ender himself had not been present. To Ender, the Bugger war was a  simulated battle game, so for him, there was no  morrel responsibility involved. To Ender,  Tehr’s people had mearly been projected pixilated images on a screen, not real at all. If they weren’t real to him, how could he have felt anything for their collective passing?

Faran was  lying on the floor of their ship, having disengaged the autopilot and engines. He was oozing misery with every poar, and Tehr  climbed from her flight chair to lie by his side, trying her best to offer some semblance of comfort. The floor was cold beneath her body, but she was so tired and consumed with grief that she minded not at all. Tehr closed her eyes and drifted, unable to do anything else. One can be in peek physical health, but when misery is forced upon you, it can prove, if possible, even more shattering than the worst  disease in the universe.  Tehr and Faran, had lost everyone and had no home left. The only  things that could be counted as their own, were this ship, and the small cluster of  eggs  nestled in a safe place in  a corner of the ship.

That was all they had left in the universe.

Ender, felt broken. His soul had been split in half by the shattering of the Bugger planet, and he would never be the same again. Guilt is a powerful thing, and Ender was feeling the full force of it pressing in upon him like a  cold slab of led.  The tears he so longed to shed, were refusing to show themselves. All he could do, was lay in the darkness on his bed, his desk cast aside on the floor, eyes shut and hot with the guilt and shame. The whole school was on lock down. It was pitch black around him, and the sounds of gunfire and shouting had completely seaced.

Petra and Bean had left him alone hours before, and Ender no  longer knew where they were.

“You have killed an entire species,” Ender said to himself, “I will  bear the shame of this egenside for ever. I will be remembered as a monster. As a killer.  And I deserve it.”

“You need to come to let us explain,” whispered another mental voice, deep within the miserable confines of Ender’s mind. “We are waiting. Come to us, and we will explain. We oe you that.”

Ender sat up. Who was that? He glanced around, but he was still alone.

“Ender Wiggin!” called the voice. It sounded pretty, soft,  female, and alien. “Ender Wiggin. We need to explain. Ender Wiggin.”

Ender had no   reckolection of crossing the room and leaving the    dormetry. He was also not aware of walking down the long  corridors, and down to where the space shuttles were parked. He knew that these  were forbidden places to go for those at the battle school, that Graff would skin him alive if he knew what Ender was planning to do, but if he was being honest with himself, Ender had no interest in what Graff thought.

He let himself enter one of the space shuttles,  subconsciously following the  femmanin voice that was drawing him closer. He had  learned how to fly a craft, flying being an important lesson in Battle School. He followed the  call, not knowing who was calling him. The only   females to whom he  could confidently show any trust or affection were Petra and Valentine, but he could tell that this female was neither of them. He didn’t recognise the call or the species, for he could tell that this female was not of human  origin.

The inky void of space was forcing itself in upon Ender like a crushing  blanket, only lightened by the tiny balls of fire that were the stars. His battle ships had  toiled through this void hours before,  controlled by  himself and his troops. The knife of shame and overwhelming guilt was twisting and slicing at his insides. He had led those soldiers to their deaths, in order to win. Winning had been all that he was capable of thinking of. Ender had killed those soldiers, and then, if that wasn’t enough,  he had led the rest of them into a mass  planetary geneside. His guilt was profound. His shame was palpable.

“Come to me Ender,” called the  female voice again, and Ender adjusted his position. “Come to me. I oe you an explanation. You are in pain, and I  wish to do what I can.”

Ender landed his craft on a diserted asteroid,  knowing that his helmit would supply him with  continuous oxygen. He squinted  through  the viewing ports, and saw one of the Bugger ships lying on the surface of the asteroid, it   shields burned away and its metal  hul damaged. It had taken heavy fire, but it had been one of the  few ships that had survived the battle. Were the ocupants of this ship still alive? Ender clambered out of his  shuttle to investigate.

The  ocupants must be alive. It was from there that the female voice was coming. She at least, was alive. Was she one of the Buggers?

“We have been waiting for a meeting with you, Ender,” the femmanin voice said quietly, only out loud this time, as  opposed to  inside his head. She was clearly visible, far more beautiful to Ender than her people had appeared on  vidios. “My name  is Tehr, and I am… eh… was, the queen of the species that you call the Buggers.”

“How,” Ender swallowed hard and began again. “How can you speak to me? And how are you alive? I thought we killed all of you. Graff said  that we had killed all of you.”

“Our ship was neglected by your army,” the creature called Tehr told him in a soft and melodic voice. Her eyes were wide with anxious fear as she gazed Ender’s way. “You did  your job well.”

Ender squeezed his eyes shut. This innocent creature, had told him that he was a good commander. Why was she  complimenting him? He had killed ninety nine percent of her people. She should hate  him should she not?

“Are there any more of you?” he asked.

Tehr gave an almost human like nod. “There is my friend,” she said softly, “but he is consumed with grief. Our people have been completely wiped out and we have no longer got anywhere  to go.”

Ender felt another stab  of guilt. This was all his fault. He had caused these creatures to lose everything.

“I feel that I oe you some information Ender,” Tehr told him. “We know a lot about your species, and we know that you understand little of our own. Your  technologies have excelerated grately since my ancestors went to your planet eighty Earth years ago,  but you have not yet achieved the gift of understanding. You see,” herr bug-like eyes fixed his, with unmistakeable intelligence, “we came in peace. We came in peace eighty years  ago and we meant you no harm. We came to Earth to try and  establish a colony amongst you, and we had no idea that you thought us frightening. Understand us Ender we came in peace. We just wanted to expand our race, and had no desire for humans  to die. We had no desire for a war. We  didn’t want to kill anyone.”

Ender couldn’t help it. Tears did  now begin to slide down his face, as his grief swepped ovr him in a fresh and powerful wave. He fell to his knees, as if he had been hit from behind.

Tehr put out a bug-like hand to touch him gently. “I know that your pain cuts deep Ender,” she said quietly. “I have been trying tjo communicate with you fro some time using your fantacy game that you were playing during the hours of relative freedom.  I  showed you images of your older brother, your older sister and our  species, in the hope that you would put everything together in the end, and  understand that we meant no harm.”

“So that was you?”

“It was.”

Ender  rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand and, in a horse voice, said, “hwo can I help? I didn’t know that those games were real. I never meant you any harm. How can I help?”

Tehr’s voice was low. “You can take my children to a safe planet, and help me re-establish my species once more.”

“Your children?”

Tehr nudged her small cluster of Bugger eggs towards him. Ender picked them up. They were small, almost pitifully so, and he was  surprised that one of the two remaining Buggers left was intrusting her peoples’ killer with her own children. Had she forgiven him?

“I have indeed forgiven you Ender,” Tehr told him quietly. Her voice was very beautiful, soft and gentle, like rolling water.  “In fact, what once seemed to be the worst possible outcome now reviels itself to be the best of luck. It means that you can help me  allow my people to be reborn. Can I count on your help?”

Ender nodded. “Of course I’ll help. It’s the least I cand o for you.”

“I thank you Ender. And,” Tehr touched his hand again in obvious and  intelligent sympathy. “Please try not to allow your grief to consume you. I will meet you again once our colony has been re-established. I hope that one day I  will see my people thrive once more, and me and my friend will join you. Just try and  live your life as best you can. Will you do this for me?”

“Of course I will.

Ender stood, making his way back towards his ship, still  clutching the Bugger eggs in his hands. He carried them carefully as he once again strapped himself into his shuttle,   wondering what Bean  and Petra and  even Graff would think about his mission, to bring the Bugger race back from the dead. He ingaged his autopilot and began to make  his way back to the battle school, knowing that Tehr, the last remaining queen of the Bugger race, would remain with him in spirit. She would make sure that he wasn’t alone, and would help him in his quest to bring back her people.

“I promise you Tehr,” he   told this telepathic being silently, knowing that she would be able to hear him,  “I will do everything I can to bring your people back. I promise you.”

And Ender Wiggin had a new mission. But now, he would share his mission with the Buggers, his once unknowing  enemies that were now his friends.

It is a funny thing when  one achieves understanding.  We find that our  perception of the world is altered, and we find that new horizons of information becomes available to us. On this night, not twenty four hours after the geneside of the Bugger race, they were now friends. One of the world’s more successful wars, if Ender was thinking about it the right way.


End file.
